iPhone 5S and 5C show up in China Telecom promo

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Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C have made yet another early appearance online. This time, it was China Telecom’s official Weibo account that did the leaking.

A lengthy vertical banner was spotted before the company managed to take it down — a move that obviously stoked the Apple rumor fires further.

In addition to Apple’s trademark pristine white, several other color cases are shown off as well. In the section devoted to the iPhone 5C, two tones are borrowed straight from the iPod touch — pink and blue — while the green, gold, and copper are new. You can currently buy an iPod in green, but the shade in China Telecom’s flyer looks a bit less “minty.”

It’s easy to see why the marketing folks at China Telecom would have jumped the gun. This release cycle will be the first time that Apple fans in China are getting a launch event around the same time as the rest of the world. The big reveal is set for September 10, and there’s a second scheduled for the very next day in Beijing.

China Telecom has reportedly already secured regulatory approval for the iPhone 5S and 5C, and it’s clearly chomping at the bit to get them on sale and into the hands of rabid Apple fans.

The iPhones shown in the promo look legit for the most part, but there are a few things that call it into question. The phone in the header, for example, is clearly running iOS 7 — logical, since it’s due to launch with the new iPhones. The green iPhone 5C, on the other hand, is shown running iOS 6. That’s not necessarily a smoking gun, of course. This could be a dummy device that was produced early on, or one that China Mobile accidentally adorned with one of its existing iOS clings. It’s also possible that China Mobile was testing a device that has Apple’s latest current stable iOS release on it — which would be 6, not 7.

Then there are the mis-labeled colors. Calling the gold iPhone yellow can probably be chalked up to translation, but the copper one? It’s definitely not green, and that’s the same English text next to different Chinese characters.

Could this be a hastily-composited fake? Possibly, but it would be odd for China Mobile to post something like that on an official social networking account. Never fear… Apple will clear the air soon enough.